Question for Shifty.... on making bomb craters in streets..

[grb]

Shifty,
Can you give me an idea as how you created craters in streets?
I would like to make craters in sections of the LOD's and figure the only
way to do it would to:
1. carefully depress an area of a LOD to have a negative hole.
2. then insert a simple patch mesh over the hole.
3. then form the simple patch mesh to fit into the LOD depression.
4. then texture the simple patch mesh with one of the bomb crater textures.

Is this how you did it? Or is there something I am missing where one can just depress sections of LOD's and then apply a different textures to that spot in the LOD?

Thanks for any feedback.

[Jack Ruby]

You dont need to add a seperate mesh,

You can hold down shift and ctrl then left click a piece of lod, this then selects only 1 section of the lod, should go kinda white with the triangles on view,

you can then texture that one piece with a crater, I find that if you texture say a 512x512 piece you need to scale the texture to 1 to make it fit, then pull down some vertices to make your crater, your good to go.

[grb]

Thanks for the advice. I have been building LOD terrain with good success, based on what you said above. The issue is when one DOES NOT
want to use a whole LOD section to make one bomb crater. Lets say I have a town lined with streets and buildings built onto a number of LODS
streching over lets say 1024x1024 area. Now what I want to do is put small bomb craters placed specifically at certain areas (lets say just off a street corner, which might have a bunch of street rubble immediately next to it or partially surrounding the crater. Then two hundred units away have another small bomb crater .....etc. Then on each street corner create sewar gratings in the street/curb areas etc.... Put another way
I may want to have six different sized (diameter/depth) craters within one
LOD area.

This is why I asked the specific question. But thank you for your help and
response.

cheers.

[Shifty]

Jack Ruby Bet me to it - but then I havnt long got back from that horrid place called work.

[crunch]

In the case you described above, your best bet would be to delete the terrain polys of the area that you want the crater and use a mesh or brushes for the fill. Same for the sewer grates. The facets are 1/2 of a 64 grid square, cut on an angle. So you would need to size your grates accordingly.
The way you described making your craters is a good way, but remember to delete the facets of LOD in the depression that will be covered by the mesh and not be seen.

Kill Ya Later!

[Slyk]

Best bet:

Assuming your streets are structural brushes. I STRONGLY suggest using a single 512x512 LOD patch. The custom patch meshes add a TON of VIS if not done nice and neat. LOD is a safer use. How to do it? Couple ways really. Easiest would be to build your streets all nice and organized. Next create a single LOD, texture it will the appropriate crater. Next position it where you want it leaving it 16 units ABOVE the street. Press 'v' and depress it appropriately. Next, with the LOD selected, press 'a' and move the setting to 128 units. Now go along the edges and drag them down INTO the street brushes (I use increments of 2). Now you should see your street brush through a cirle like image of the LOD.

The next step is simple. I select the street brush that I just placed the LOD in and duplicate it. Now, drag one copy of the street brush to one side until it passes out of the 'crater' part of the LOD. Next drag the other street brush in the opposite direction. Depending on your street width, you may need four street brushes to accomplish this.

Maybe a little confusing, but basically you're making a hole in the street by NOT putting a solid brush there, then inserting your crater into it. Very easy and fast. You can then copy/paste that crater around and vary it's 'v' qualities at will to add some variation.

[grb]

Thanks for the feedback and informative instructions. I didn't consider
removing poly vertices from the LOD's then fill in with patch mesh.
I have downloaded this tread for reference.

In retrospect, just making a comment.... it would have been great if
the Radiant Tool had a set of tools that would allow one to SELECT a
given shape (lets say a circle or a square .....or a pop up window that would allow one to create on the fly a given shape, lets say a kidney or hot dog shape) that then could be placed over a given area of a poly mesh or LOD then hit a key that would remove those vertices under the
TOOL MASK shape. Perhaps even allow for one to either raise or lower
all LOD or mesh vertices located underneath the MASK shape. This could
have been a real blessing.

At any rate, thanks again guys for helping me out.

cheers